Purdy: USA men's basketball team working hard to not anger world

LONDON, ENGLAND - JULY 27: LeBron James (L) and Kobe Bryant (R) look on during a basketball press conference ahead of the London 2012 Olympics on July 27, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Jeff Gross/Getty Images)

LONDON -- The USA men's basketball team has arrived at the Olympics and is facing the usual challenge: Trying to acknowledge its superiority in the most diplomatic fashion possible.

Mike Krzyzewski, the head coach, is the master at this technique. He will bend over backwards-in man-to-man bending or zone bending -- to not utter the blunt truth: The USA team is so good, it should win easily here. Even with the injury absence of Dwight Howard, Derrick Rose and Dwyane Wade, there's enough talent to beat the world. Handily, maybe.

But don't try to get anyone to say that. Especially Coach K.

"Basketball is beautiful," Krzyzewski said Friday morning. "It's a beautiful game. To see how it's interpreted by the Italian team, the Spanish team, all the international teams, has been a great learning experience for us."

Yup, that will go up on a lot of global bulletin boards as motivation to beat the USA. Not.

Still it's always interesting to see which players are most into the Games and representing their country. Under the leadership of USA Basketball managing director Jerry Colangelo, the national team philosophy has made an excellent turnaround. Used to be, some of the great players had to be coaxed into playing. Under Colangelo, there was none of that. His attitude is: If you want to make the strong commitment to play for your country, let's go. If you don't, that's fine. We'll win without you.

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Last time, in Beijing, they won. And just like in China, during their pre-tournament press session, I asked a few USA players the same question: What is the most American thing about this team? Back in 2008, LeBron James had given me a decent enough answer: It's the initials on the front of the uniform. This is James' third Olympic Games and he's clearly the team leader. But I'm always intrigued by how much thought other players put into forming a reply.

"The most American thing about our team?" repeated forward Andre Iguodala of the Philadelphia 76ers. "It's that we all like McDonald's apple pies. And when we got to the Olympic Village last night, it was a blow to the stomach because they didn't have any."

All right, so some of them don't put a lot of thought into the question -- although on Friday morning, Kevin Love of the Minnesota Timberwolves did ponder his answer for a long while before responding.

"I think," he finally said, "it's that we're really able to check our egos at the door and be what each of us can be to make the team better. Each of us, in our own cities, is the man. But we play different roles on this team and we're able to do that."

James, who said he has no real memory of the original 1992 Dream Team that won the gold medal in Barcelona. LeBron was eight years old at the time -- came the closest to making a bold statement. Sitting between Kobe Bryant and Carmelo Anthony on the interview platform, James announced this year's mission.

"If we play the way we can, this can be the best team ever assembled," James said. "But we still have to play the games . . . The '92 Dream Team is the '92 Dream Team and that's that. We're not going to be able to play against them. Father Time is not going to allow that to happen. So it doesn't matter what anyone says about any of that. I'll just say we can be great team, too."